The Peace Negotiations Between the Governments of the South African Republic and the Orange Free State

Talks that ended the South African War began with a letter from Lord Kitchener on 4 March 1902 and finished at the end of May in a large tent at Vereeniging, where sixty burgher delegates voted 54 to 6 to accept British terms. The two men who kept the minutes wrote this book: J. D. Kestell, secretary to the Orange Free State government, and D. E. van Velden, who took the shorthand for the South African Republic and later translated the record into English. They set down the preliminary correspondence, the meetings at Klerksdorp, the conferences at Pretoria with Kitchener and Lord Milner, and the delegates’ arguments, with the Middelburg proposals appended. Seven of the leaders who had been there, among them Steyn, Botha and de Wet, read the manuscript and certified it a true account before publication.